Uarda : a Romance of Ancient Egypt — Volume 03 eBook

She was a tall woman of noble demeanor, whose sharp
but delicately-cut features and sparkling eyes could
still assert some pretensions to feminine beauty.
She wore a long robe, which reached below her ankles;
it was of costly material, but dark in color, and of
a studied simplicity. Instead of the ornaments
in bracelets, anklets, ear and finger-rings, in necklaces
and clasps, which most of the Egyptian ladies —­and
indeed her own sister and daughter—­were
accustomed to wear, she had only fresh flowers, which
were never wanting in the garden of her son-in-law.
Only a plain gold diadem, the badge of her royal descent,
always rested, from early morning till late at night,
on her high brow—­ for a woman too high,
though nobly formed—­and confined the long
blue-black hair, which fell unbraided down her back,
as if its owner contemned the vain labor of arranging
it artistically. But nothing in her exterior
was unpremeditated, and the unbejewelled wearer of
the diadem, in her plain dress, and with her royal
figure, was everywhere sure of being observed, and
of finding imitators of her dress, and indeed of her
demeanor.

And yet Katuti had long lived in need; aye at the
very hour when we first make her acquaintance, she
had little of her own, but lived on the estate of
her son-in-law as his guest, and as the administrator
of his possessions; and before the marriage of her
daughter she had lived with her children in a house
belonging to her sister Setchem.

She had been the wife of her own brother,

[Marriages between brothers and sisters
were allowed in ancient Egypt. The Ptolemaic
princes adopted this, which was contrary to the
Macedonian customs. When Ptolemy II. Philadelphus
married his sister Arsinoe, it seems to have
been thought necessary to excuse it by the relative
positions of Venus and Saturn at that period, and
the constraining influences of these planets.]

who had died young, and who had squandered the greatest
part of the possessions which had been left to him
by the new royal family, in an extravagant love of
display.

When she became a widow, she was received as a sister
with her children by her brother-in-law, Paaker’s
father. She lived in a house of her own, enjoyed
the income of an estate assigned to her by the old
Mohar, and left to her son-in-law the care of educating
her son, a handsome and overbearing lad, with all
the claims and pretensions of a youth of distinction.

Such great benefits would have oppressed and disgraced
the proud Katuti, if she had been content with them
and in every way agreed with the giver. But this
was by no means the case; rather, she believed that
she might pretend to a more brilliant outward position,
felt herself hurt when her heedless son, while he
attended school, was warned to work more seriously,
as he would by and by have to rely on his own skill
and his own strength. And it had wounded her
when occasionally her brother-in-law had suggested
economy, and had reminded her, in his straightforward
way, of her narrow means, and the uncertain future
of her children.